The knowledge constituency versus the ignorance lobby

The saga of Prof. Dajani is a subset of a broader Arab struggle between the forces of intelligence and stupidity

A brave man. (Image via Blogspot)

Chalk up another victory to the mighty Arab ignorance and stupidity brigade. Or should we?

Professor Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, who runs the Al-Quds University
Department of American Studies and University Library has been allowed
to resign his position following the uproar over a trip he led of
Palestinian university students to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Some
Palestinians, including some of his own university colleagues, attacked
Prof. Dajani with a mishmash of incoherent and utterly irrational
condemnations.

The whole saga has been most impressively chronicled by the redoubtable Matthew Kalman of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, whose latest report
suggests that Prof. Dajani sought and received promises of support from
the university leadership, only to have his resignation letter accepted
rather than rejected. Presumably Al-Quds University just doesn't want
to hear any more criticism and prefers to turn its back on the entire
"controversy" rather than uphold academic freedom in its own
institution.

Prof. Dajani told Mr. Kalman that he saw his
letter of resignation as "a kind of litmus test to see whether the
university administration supports academic freedom and freedom of
action and of expression as they claim or not.” If this was indeed a
test, they just got a resounding F.

But the whole squalid
affair is redolent with Palestinian, and broader Arab, collective
neurotic symptoms about others. What, after all, do Palestinians have to
gain by insisting their students remain ignorant of the Holocaust?
Prof. Dajani argued from the outset that it is essential to understand
the Israeli mentality and the Jewish experiences, especially in Europe
during the first half of the 20th century, that inform it. It's an
unassailable argument.

Nonetheless, there are those, including
professors, who, with a straight face, argue that Palestinians should
only be taught, and by implication think, about their own Nakba.

Others tried to argue that the problem was not with the trip to Nazi
death camps itself, but rather that Prof. Dajani's trip was coordinated
with an Israeli university that took Jewish students to a Palestinian
refugee camp in the West Bank.

Shock! Horror! Normalization! It's laughable.

There's little hope of Israelis and Palestinians improving their
dreadful relationship without, among many other things, trying to
understand each other's histories and narratives. That's hardly a
panacea. Real coexistence can only emerge in the absence of occupation,
and the structural relationship of dominance and subordination built
into that profoundly unhealthy and abusive structure. But better mutual
understanding may be an essential component of helping to end the
occupation and the conflict.

Even if none of that's true,
knowledge is, nonetheless, power. The constituency for keeping
Palestinian students ignorant of certain facts, presumably because they
present the truth about Jewish suffering in Europe during the 20th
century and that this complicates the understanding of Jewish Israelis
simply as oppressors in the occupied Palestinian territories, is a
perfect example of the "stupidity lobby."

And it's not just
restricted to Palestinians and their relationship to Jewish history and
the Holocaust. There is a broader conflict throughout Arab culture
between those who want to embrace the world, in all its complexity and
challenges, versus those who want to crawl inside a warm cocoon of
insularity. Relying on nostalgic fantasies about former periods of
greatness, the broad Arab ignorance constituency is very powerful.

It includes not only Islamists and other religious dogmatists,
including apolitical clerics, but also strident nationalists, leftists,
fascists, and chauvinists of every possible variety. Among all of these
groupings, as well as the important open-minded and globally-conscious
constituencies that are most in favor of engaging the world, there are
people who push back against insularity. But for the past century at
least, the majority trend in the Arab world has been to try, insofar as
possible, to shut out knowledge of and engagement with outsiders, except
for commercial purposes.

Many Arabs seem to be suspicious of
and hostile towards real knowledge of others (as opposed to myths and
stereotypes, of course), and even more engagement with them. Too many of
us just don't want to hear it. Those, like Prof. Dajani, who try to
break through this curtain of insularity are frequently punished, or at
least criticized, for their embrace of broader realities, some of which
are uncomfortable and destabilize reassuring mythologies.

Prof.
Dajani says he doesn't regret the turn of events. Why should he? He's
done something noble and constructive, and he will continue to do so
without the support of his former university, through many other venues
such as his Wasatia movement. But he, and all those like him throughout
the region who want to smash the shackles of decades of carefully
cultivated ignorance and embrace history and reality in all its
troublesome complexity, are pointing the way.

The whole Arab world is at a turning point. If it continues to
allow the stupidity and ignorance lobby, in all its myriad forms, to
insist on cultural insularity, chauvinism, and deafness to the outside
world, it will remain utterly stuck and unable to successfully join and
compete in a globalizing world. But if the intelligence and knowledge
constituency, as embodied by Prof. Dajani and so many other important
leading Arabs, succeed in turning their societies away from decades of
enforced parochialism, they will be among the most important groups in
building a better future for the Middle East.

The saga of Prof.
Dajani, and the whole battle between the Arab ignorance versus
knowledge constituencies, is far from over. My money is on the
intelligence community ultimately defeating the stupidity brigade, but
it's going to be an uphill struggle.